A shovel, hand weights and a construction hat now displayed in the foyer of New York City Hall are symbols of what Mayor Zohran Mamdani says are the “pothole politics” behind key achievements in his first 100 days in office. That’s where we started our conversation this week during a wide-ranging interview for NPR’s Newsmakers video podcast.

Sitting in the ornate Blue Room of City Hall underneath a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, a founding father who helped shape the nation, 34-year-old Mamdani ticked off all that he’s been able to get done on his list of promises to voters:

“On day eight, we delivered $1.2 billion to make universal child care a reality across our city.”

“We secured more than $30 million in settlements with bad landlords, [and] repaired more than 6069 apartments.”

“We were able to secure nearly $100,000 a day for workers and small businesses that had been exploited by mega-corporations and delivery apps.”

“And we showed that the government can do all of these big transformative things while also doing the little things … filling in 102,000 potholes in that same length of time.”

“I share this with all of you, to give you a sense of where we are on what animated so many,” Mamdani said. “It shows people the very things they were told they would be wrong to believe in are in fact the ones that we can deliver on.”

Just after our interview there was another big win for the energetic young mayor. New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced she’s now backing a plan to tax the multi-million dollar homes of out-of-state residents. It’s money that will go toward paying down the $5.4 billion city budget shortfall.

Mamdani quickly turned to social media to tout the move.

“When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich,” he tells the camera in a video post showing him standing in front of a $238 million penthouse.

He leans in, knocks on the lens and says, “Well today, we’re taxing the rich.”

You can watch the Newsmakers interview with Mamdani above. Below are highlights from our conversation.

Mamdani says there’s a lot more to do

Following through on some of his other campaign promises has proven challenging for the mayor. He has promised to disband a police unit accused of heavy handed tactics with protesters, but has not yet done so. It is a key part of Mamdani’s police reform.

I asked where he stands on the issue now.

“I’m committed to disbanding the Strategic Response Group and decoupling our city’s response to protests versus threats of terrorism,” he said. “Part of what you’re seeing in our administration is that we want to deliver this in a manner that isn’t just checking a box, but in a manner that both upholds the sanctity of the First Amendment, the freedom of expression of protest, and also does so in a manner that keeps New Yorkers safe.”

Overcoming Skepticism

There was a lot of doubt from the political establishment when Mamdani, a democratic socialist, swept into office on the promise of affordability.

He shared that message walking the streets of New York City and creating playful videos that talked economics through “halalflation” or poked fun at the focus on his youth with a promise to get older every year. Those are now a signature of his administration. He uses these videos to announce new plans from his administration or to mark major religious holidays important to New Yorkers such as Ramadan and Passover.

In office he’s been a pragmatist and some of his doubters are now key allies on some issues, including Democratic Governor Hochul, who is a partner in his push for universal childcare and now this new tax levied on the most wealthy part-time residents of New York City.

The proposed “pied-a-terre” tax got a sharp reaction from the president who accused the mayor of “destroying” the city in a Thursday post online.

Many Republicans continue to paint the mayor as a radical to be feared. He still faces bigoted attacks on his faith and ethnicity. I asked if he feels pressure to show his brand of democratic socialism works before the midterms this fall, knowing that those attacks are only going to ramp up.

Mamdani said he doesn’t think about how Republicans try to characterize him.

“I think about the fact that the power of an ideology is judged in the worth of its delivery,” he said. “Because for a long time, Republicans have sought to describe themselves as being driven by the needs of working people, when in reality we’ve seen a chasm in what they’ve actually delivered for those people.”

The war in Iran speaks to a “broken kind of politics”

That chasm is most clear in his deep opposition to the U.S. war on Iran, he said.

“We’re talking about a federal administration that has spent close to $30 billion dollars killing thousands of people at a time when working class people across this country cannot afford the bare minimum,” he said. “And to be told that a city-run grocery store is implausible, but spending more than $500 million a day to kill people in Iran and Lebanon is not only plausible but necessary, it speaks to a broken kind of politics.”

He said that New Yorkers feel the effects of that war beyond their pocketbook.

“At the core of any war is a dehumanization that takes place, and that dehumanization is not limited to any battlefield,” he said. “It extends into the lives of people across this country.”

He shared the story of a young Muslim woman he called after seeing the news that she had been thrown to the ground at a New York City subway stop.

“She told me that the first thing her attacker said to her before he attacked her was, ‘I wonder how many Iranians we killed today,’” he said. “That is what we are allowing to take hold in our politics.”

“He’s the President and I’m the Mayor” 

Mamdani captured the nation’s attention all over again when he met President Trump in November after he won the mayor’s office.

The president had referred to him as a “communist lunatic” and Mamdani had called the president a “fascist” and promised to “Trump-proof” New York City.

Yet he appeared to charm the president, even as he smiled and said “yes” when he was asked if he still thinks Trump is a fascist.

“I think that one of the few things that we have in common is that we are both New Yorkers,” Mamdani said. “One part of being a New Yorker is both, to be honest and to be direct. And when I’m sitting with the president, we talk about places of potential collaboration … But we’re also very clear about places of disagreement.”

On his new life at Gracie Mansion

So what’s life like now that he’s moved from a one-bedroom in Queens to a literal mansion?

“You never realize how small your one-bedroom is until you try and move it into the larger bedroom that we have there,” he said.

Mamdani hasn’t had time to really think about all that space he now has, because he spends most of his time at City Hall and around New York City. He tries to keep a semblance of his old life by getting around the city on foot, by bike or train.

“If you spend every single day driving around in a tinted window security detail, you will have a very specific view of the city,” he said. “You actually meet other New Yorkers and you break out of the bubble that so many have come to expect of politics, where politicians only seem to be spending time with other politicians or the people who donated to make them politicians.”

I lived part of my teen years in Brasília, the capital built from scratch whose architecture and urban planning have drawn equal parts fascination and disdain. Over the years I’ve grown accustomed to comments about how “wild” the spaceship-like buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer must have looked, how “alienating” the car-centric city must have been. But when I first heard these kinds of comments, I was admittedly surprised, because my memories of living in the city were much more mundane — eating hot dogs on the dusty sidewalks, hanging with friends at the base of our apartment building, movie-hopping at the mall. In other words, I was just living my life.

Now that I live in L.A., I sometimes hear echoes of what I used to hear about Brasília. They are both places with a mythic allure that nonetheless draw the same kinds of criticisms. How do you live in such a sprawling city where you have to drive everywhere? Isn’t it isolating? But as with Brasília, I’ve found that the way L.A. is perceived is much different than how it is lived.

Our April issue is about the lived experience of the city and its architecture. A postmodernist house in Baldwin Hills becomes a place for a family to dream. A billboard on the drive home becomes a personal landmark. A therapist’s room becomes a container for everything. A museum is held up as much by its walls as the people who work within them. We are part of our built environments, and nothing encompasses this more than our cover story on Lauren Halsey and her much-anticipated sculpture park, “sister dreamer lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles,” which is literally etched with the faces and stories of people from South-Central, where the artist grew up and still lives. On the cover photo, the artist stands in the back, in the shadows, allowing the people who shaped her project to take center stage.

Architects, I’m told, are obsessed with the idea of thresholds — corners, crossings, the in-between. This makes sense to me when I look at this cover, the group standing between four walls that don’t quite meet, the sky above and around them, inside and outside at the same time. It is a moving illustration of how a space can hold and contain — feel safe — while also holding an open sense of possibility.

A federal jury in Manhattan found that Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, have been acting as a monopoly, stifling competition and overcharging consumers.

But that doesn’t mean your next concert ticket will automatically be a better deal.

Wednesday’s verdict is a legal win for the 33 states and Washington, D.C., that accused the company of wielding its immense power over too many aspects of the live entertainment industry, from concert promotion and artist management to venue operations and ticketing services.

And it’s vindication for the many disgruntled artists, venues and fans who say they have been paying the price. The verdict has the potential to reshape the live music industry in the U.S. But the fight isn’t over.

States’ attorneys general now have to argue in favor of specific “remedies and financial penalties” — as many of them put it in celebratory press releases — at a separate trial. The lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, Jeffrey Kessler, declined to comment to NPR because that trial has not been scheduled.

One remedy that many ticketing advocates and Democratic lawmakers want is for the government to force the breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster — which merged in 2010 — separating the concert promoter from the ticket seller.

Meanwhile, Live Nation said in a statement that “the jury’s verdict is not the last word on this matter.” It has not responded to NPR’s request for comment.

The company said several motions are still pending in front of the court, including one to strike some expert testimony from the trial.

“Of course, Live Nation can and will appeal any unfavorable rulings on these motions,” it added.

Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in antitrust law, said a verdict from a jury is generally harder to fight successfully than one from a judge. In any case, she said, whatever remedy the court orders would likely be paused while an appeal plays out.

“So it’s not like next month … certainly not in 2026, will Live Nation be severed from Ticketmaster,” she said.

What about the long-term? 

Thales Teixeira, a professor at UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management, says this next phase is “a little bit complicated because there’s so many parties involved … that might want different things out of a potential settlement or a trial.”

Beyond major restructuring, Live Nation could be forced to take steps like end exclusive contracts, cap service fees and open booking at its venues to competing platforms like SeatGeek and AXS.

The company is also likely to face financial penalties, which could include payouts to some consumers: The jury found that Live Nation overcharged customers by $1.72 per ticket in 22 states. Live Nation said that applies to only a fraction of tickets sold, and estimated total damages below $150 million (which it says the court would triple, per legal standards).

But that money most likely won’t go directly to consumers, Allensworth says, unlike in a class-action lawsuit (which the company also faces). She says any judgment amount would go back to the participating states, which can use it as they see fit — most likely for some sort of consumer-related issue, not back into ticket-buyers’ pockets.

“Really, here, the win for the consumers is the future and the restoration of competition, if that happens, which is why I think it’s so important for the remedy to go beyond this dollar amount,” she says.

A young fan tries her luck outside Taylor Swift’s concert in London in August 2024. A chaotic Eras Tour presale in 2022 crashed Ticketmaster, canceled the general fueled calls for the platform to be held accountable.

Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images Europe

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Teixeira says consumers in the U.S. have gotten used to the high cost of concert tickets, not to mention food, parking and other expenses. If anything, he says some of fans’ anger may have been alleviated by Ticketmaster’s implementation (to comply with federal regulations) of all-in pricing in 2025, labeling fees upfront rather than revealing them at checkout.

And he doesn’t think the outcome of this case will lower ticket prices in the long term. For one, he says Live Nation can make up any lost fees in other ways, like upping the cost of a parking spot at one of the many venues it controls.

“My view is that even in the best-case scenario, if the states that have gone forward with the trial win most of their claims, I’d say very little will change for the average concertgoer,” he said.

What about the settlement? 

While many states’ attorneys general have uniformly referred to their effort as a “coalition,” Teixeira says it’s possible that some could leave the process early, depending on which of their demands are met.

A version of that has happened in this case already: About half a dozen states joined a tentative $280 settlement between President Trump’s Justice Department and Live Nation last month, just days into the trial.

As part of the settlement, the company agreed to do things like cap service fees at 15% and divest exclusive booking agreements with about a dozen amphitheaters, which ticketing organizations and Democratic lawmakers say does not go nearly far enough. That settlement must undergo a 60-day public comment period and get federal court approval before it can be finalized.

Just this week, several of the most vocal Democrats on this topic — including Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — submitted a letter urging the judge in the case to “closely scrutinize this settlement,” which they called insufficient.

Live Nation said in its Wednesday statement that it is confident “that the ultimate outcome of the States’ case will not be materially different than what is envisioned by the DOJ settlement.”

Allensworth says that Live Nation can point to the settlement to show the judge that it is already taking steps to restore competition, in hopes of less intrusive remedies. But she expects states to have the same response as the Democratic lawmakers: “It’s a slap on the wrist and, your Honor, you need to impose something more meaningful here.”

Even if the company is forced to split up, she says, it’s not clear how long it would take for the live events landscape — which Live Nation and Ticketmaster have dominated for so long — to feel the effects. But she says the pressure of competition would undoubtedly improve the experience for venues, artists and fans alike.

“It’s one of the wonderful, and I think frustrating, things about organizing our whole economy through competition, is that we don’t know what new ideas will come forward,” Allensworth says. “We don’t know how they will affect consumers. But we do know that the best way to provide long-term consumer welfare is to have a place for new ideas to come to life.”